Ethan Tussey

On his book The Procrastination Economy: The Big Business of Downtime

Cover Interview of February 04, 2018

In a nutshell

People check their mobile phones over 80 times every day,
and while that frequency may alarm us as we survey a crowd of people hunched
over their phones, it is less disturbing when we look at why and where people
use their phones. Most of the time, when we check our mobile devices, we engage
them for less than thirty seconds. While we can use our phones most anywhere,
research shows that we are most likely to use them at home, in transit, at
work, waiting in line, and in a public space. My book, The Procrastination
Economy: The Big Business of Downtime, delves into mobile device use and
describes the vibrant “procrastination economy” found in those spaces.

The procrastination economy is a term I give to efforts by
media companies to design mobile apps, platforms, products, and hardware that
monetize our in-between moments. My book argues that mobile devices, and our
experience of much of the Internet, is determined by the spaces of the
procrastination economy. The traditions and behaviors associated with these
spaces shape user behavior and media company strategies. For example, Facebook’s
2006 redesign, replaced the personal-profile landing page with “News Feed,” a
scrolling timeline that made the social network easier to use while checking in
with friends during a break at work. YouTube put their “background playback”
functionality behind a subscription paywall because people like listening to
streaming video while multitasking on their phones on the commute. Casual
games, like Candy Crush, offer short bursts of entertainment ideally suited to
filling the time while we wait in line.

Film developed in relation to the experience of watching
movies in a theater. Television was shaped by the cultural and spatial politics
of the domestic sphere. Readers should remember this history as they learn
about the spaces of the procrastination economy and the ways mobile devices have
amplified activities that were previously marginalized. The office breakroom
television, the waiting room pile of magazines, drivetime radio, and the
crossword puzzle we did during commercial breaks, are all a part of the
procrastination economy. The strategies and assumptions that informed these
cultural objects are now shaping our use of smartphones, tablets, and the
Internet of Things.

The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009

[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011